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Ares Castler
'Ares John Castler '(1776-1862) was a Lasterian railroad mogul who revolutionized the Lasterian transportation system and facilitated the rise of the Industrial Revolution and the Industrial Era. He became fabulously wealthy and founded one of the richest and most powerful families of all time. He split his fortune among his three sons, who would expand his industry and continue to loom large over the Lasterian economy for the rest of the century. Castler was born and raised in a small farming family in southern Marshall but ran away from home at the age of 16 to seek his fortune in Marshall City, a growing trading center on the northern coast. In Marshall City, Ares Castler used his cunning and business sense to invest in the new model of thes team engine invented by his friend and business partner Robert L. Kissinger, a young engineer, allowing them to create the modern Lasterian railroad system. He founded Castler and Kissinger, Inc. at the age of twenty-five, which, by the time that he was forty, now simply Castler, Inc., had grown into a massive commercial empire that transformed Marshall City and Lasterus. In 1845, Castler, Inc. controlled 95% of Lasterus's railroads, and used vertical integration to establish a monopoly over the production of rails. Castler, Inc. also invested in steel, originally used on the railroad and later developing into a burgeoning industry of its own. Castler died in 1862 with a personal wealth of over two billion Lasterian dollars, the modern-day equivalent of more than fifty billion dollars. He was often described as the "Rail Emperor" or the "King of Lasterus" and his story was often used as an example of rags-to-riches success in the industrial era. He split his money evenly among his three sons, and the Castler fortune would remain split until 1910, when his grandson Leo Castler inherited nearly all of the fortune and overtook Ares as the richest man in history. Ares Castler is today remembered by numerous buildings, monuments and roads throughout Lasterus, including Castler Station in Marshall City, the Castler Highway (Interstate Highway I) connecting Marshall City and Caristopolis, and the statue of Ares Castler on the harbor of Marshall City. Early Life Ares Castler was born in Mennonita, Marshall, on September 5, 1776 to William and Elisabetta Castler, the seventh of nine children. He was named for his great grandfather, Ares Franklin Castler, who allegedly built their small farmhouse by hand. Little else is known definitively about Castler's early life, and his later recollections of his childhood were often contradictory and exaggerated; he would often claim that the family lived constantly on the brink of starvation, or that his father would beat him every night, but these claims mostly came out later in his life as he was trying to play out his rags to riches life story. It is believed that his father was an alcoholic, and may have been abusive. They were also poor, although his descriptions of their extraordinary plight were likely exaggerated. Castler attended elementary school before dropping out to help his parents on their farm, an activity which he hated; he would later say that he "felt a longing in his heart for the big city life." When he was sixteen, his uncle Thomas Castler died childless and left most of his money to Ares, who then decided to run away with the money to Marshall City, at the time a flourishing if young port city. Ares claimed that he traveled to Marshall City with "only enough money to live on" but other reports indicate that he may have received an inheritance of as much as five thousand dollars, making him richer than his own parents. He hitchhiked most of the way north with various people, eventually arriving in Marshall City with no definitive plan but to make himself rich. He supposedly spent the next six years navigating his way through the city on various ill-advised get-rich-quick schemes until he made the acquantance of Robert Kissinger, who had just patented what he believed to be the first steam-powered vehicle capable of traveling long distances. Castler had, through moral and questionable means, amassed at least twelve thousand dollars, and offered to aid Kissinger in the creation of Lasterus's first railroad. He pretended to have more money than he had, and Kissinger, who was quite poor at the time, agreed readily. Castler proceeded to borrow twenty thousand dollars and he and Kissinger worked to create a railway stretching between Marshall City and the nearby town of Port Martin. When the railroad turned out to be a success, Castler and Kissinger declared their railroad company Castler and Kissinger, Inc. and set about to construct more railroads. Castler and Kissinger, Inc. Kissinger's revamped steam-powered engine spread across Lasterus, and soon Castler and Kissinger received a grant from the wealthy landowner and entrepeneur Wesley Stewart to construct a railroad connecting Marshall City and Caristopolis. When meeting with Stewart, Castler and Kissinger pretended to be far older and more knowledgeable than they were, and Stewart agreed to give them five hundred thousand dollars in order for a share of the profits. Castler wrote the contract, which Stewart did not read, which specified in the middle of a long and boring block of text that Stewart's share of the profits would end after two years. Dubbed the Continental Railroad, the line from Marshall City to Caristopolis was an enormous undertaking than took nearly six years to complete, between 1801 and 1807. Many critics across Lasterus called the undertaking a massive folly and a terrible investement on the part of Stewart. However, as soon as the railroad opened, it became massively successful, and opened up new trade between the north and south coasts. Enormous profits rolled in to Castler and Kissinger, Inc., who, in turn, payed large amounts to Stewart, who was nearly paid back for his investment in only two years. In 1809, Castler and Kissinger stopped sending money to Stewart, who wrote them an angry letter stating that they had a contractual obligation to pay him. Castler then showed him the actual contract, and, while Stewart attemped to sue, the Lasterian Supreme Court supported Castler and Stewart was cut out of the deal. Castler and Kissinger, Inc. grew larger and larger and began building more railroads all across the country as Castler and Kissinger, at the time equal business partners, grew richer and richer. Kissinger also refused to allow any other companies to use his model of steam engine, and, while they attempted to construct their own railroads, none of them worked as smoothly or quickly as Kissinger's model. The Castler and Kissinger era ended abruptly in 1813 when Kissinger caught pneumonia and died. Castler said that he was "terribly broken up" by the lost of a "dear friend." However, he seized the opportunity to rename his company Castler, Inc. and declare himself the single CEO and president. Castler, Inc. Later Years and Death fd Political Views Castler's political views have been a topic of great discussion. Despite being widely hailed as a father figure of market capitalism and a major figure of libertarian and liberalist ideology, his own views were not necessarily so clearly based on pure market capitalize. He described himself as a "progressive" and a "futurist," and his views were best expressed through the magazine he owned and curated, The New Republic. In this, he expressed a broad interest in industrialization and in socially progressive ideas, such as the rights of women. However, he was enormously critical of organized labor movements as they began to develop under his eye. Ares Castler was also a noted supporter of collaboration between government and capital, and at times expressed disdain for democracy; this has led some to describe him as an influence on the development of fascism, although he himself was not interested in Lasterian nationalism and described himself as a globalist. However, he was obsessed with infrastructure, as expressed through his planning of Marshall City to be a futurist megacity. Legacy Category:History (Lasterus) Category:Marshall City Category:Industrialism Category:Industrial Revolution Category:Nineteenth Century Category:Castler